Blockchain technology has enormous potential benefits for all facets of business, but for most companies those benefits are far out of reach today. We’re still in the early days for blockchain, and the technology is too new, too complex, and too challenging for most companies to implement on their own.

The blockchain concept of tokenization, however, is easy for any company to grasp: Create a branded digital currency to incentivize and reward users, monetize micro transactions, and fuel a dynamic ecosystem within your community.

Simple Token is designed to bridge this gap, to empower crypto currencies for digital communities.

Simple Token already has a software suite that gives you all the tools you need to design, customize, monitor, analyze, and manage your economy.

The Simple Token software, built on OpenST, helps companies launch and manage their ST-powered token economies. It’s a SaaS software package, a dashboard, a set of tools, for managing a token economy.

At the foundation of the OpenST platform sits the Simple Token contract. This contract follows the EIP20 standard and is the registry of all Simple Token, “ST,” balances.

OpenST is an infrastructure, while Simple Token software is middleware. Together, they provide an easy on-ramp for consumer app tokenization.

The more companies building on ST, the more demand for it.

There are seven companies already building on the platform: Pepo, Gushcloud, Digital Knights, Interview Bit, Look (by Vidi-VR), Floship, XAIN, and 50 more in the pipeline.

“For years, Starbucks has dreamt of creating its own branded currency. But the reality has fallen short of the vision. But blockchain-based currencies and platforms like Simple Token will enable Starbucks — and countless other brands — to create their own branded currencies easily and affordably.”

“As with many other innovations, Starbucks was ahead of its time in seeing the potential of digital branded currencies to redefine customer engagement. But the technology wasn’t ready. It is now.”.

The Simple Token solution enables any business to launch a cryptocurrency on a blockchain without the legal, regulatory, and technology headaches involved with doing it alone.

ST is an ERC-20 token, and OpenST-Protocol enables the creation of utility tokens on a sidechain while their value is backed by staked crypto-assets on public Ethereum.

The Team

Jason GoldbergChief Executive Officer

Jason Goldberg is a veteran internet entrepreneur, with an 18-year history of scaling products to millions of users. Since 2016, Jason’s passion has been to drive mainstream consumer adoption of blockchain technologies. Jason splits time between Berlin, Germany; Pune, India; and Hong Kong.

Nishith ShahChief Technology Officer

After a year of traveling around the world, Nishith Shah has immersed himself into crypto-economics and blockchain technology. Nishith previously founded several consumer internet companies, including Hem.com, Fab.com, Fabulis, Social Median, True Sparrow and Montred. Nishith is based in Pune, India.

Ben BollenChief Technology Strategist

Benjamin Bollen is a physicist working to build decentralized computing systems since 2009. Benjamin previously built Hyperledger Burrow, formerly Eris-DB, as Lead Developer at Monax Industries, worked on the routing layer while at MaidSafe, and researched computationally efficient representations of strongly correlated quantum systems at university. You can find Ben in Berlin, Germany; Brussels, Belgium; and Pune, India.

Advisors

Gil PenchinaAdvisor

Gil Penchina is a serial entrepreneur and super angel. He was an angel investor in Brave, Ripple, Filecoin, Civic, EOS, and in Paypal in 1999. He is a frequent media contributor on blockchain on TechCrunch and Medium. He is a Co-Founder at Pryze.com and partner at Ridge Ventures. Penchina was previously Co-Founder of Fastly, CEO of Wikia, now a top 50 website, and was a member of the pre-IPO team at eBay.

Rick DudleyAdvisor

President of Vulcanize, a firm providing decentralized applications with blockchain technical guidance, project management, and code & security audits, in addition to being a Blockchain Architect for Omega One. Dudley also spent time with ConsenSys, where he developed a patent in provably fair gaming and designed novel cryptographic protocols.

Technology

OpenST-ProtocolThe smart contracts that implement the core of the protocol, these contracts enable a member company to stake value on Ethereum, and, in a cryptographically auditable way, mint branded tokens on a utility side-chain. Available under Apache License 2.0.

OpenST-PlatformThe web3 extension and APIs for any company to integrate their branded tokens into their consumer application. Available under GNU LGPLv3 license.

Consensus AlgorithmThe first consensus engine for OpenST is PoW on the Ethereum mainnet, as it is the impartial judge for guarding all value and the final judge on all state that is executed on the OpenST side chains. The validators on those side chains are PoS, with the stake staked on the Ethereum mainnet as well (as opposed to most other PoS systems where the stake is internal to the PoS chain).

ICO

The goal with the token sale is to get ST into the hands of as many developers and companies as possible – to kickstart an ecosystem around OpenST. Towards that goal, they have designed the ST sale to accrue more benefits to the community as more people participate in the sale.

The ETH price per token is 0.000278, and thus 1 ETH = 3598.214 ST. On November 20th, 2017, it was announced that all purchasers will also get 15% bonus ST after the sale due to fluctuations in ETH during the sale.

Soft Cap: 50,000,000 ST. The soft cap was achieved during a private pre-sale for large purchasers and early member companies. Pre-sale purchasers received an average of 27% bonus (different bonus levels were provided based on purchase size). All pre-sale purchasers will have their ST released to them 1/12th per month over a 12-month period following the sale. The bonuses for pre-sale purchasers are not included towards the soft cap.

Hard Cap: 240,000,000 ST tokens are available for purchase in the sale, of the 800,000,000 total ST ever minted (finite supply).

The token sale will end when the hard cap of 240,000,000 purchased tokens (not including any bonus tokens) is sold or at 12:59:59 UTC on 1 December, 2017. If all 240,000,000 purchasable tokens are sold, $20M worth of ETH will have been raised.

ST Kicker: When a total of 120,000,000 ST have been sold, all participants in the sale will receive an automatic 25% Kicker Bonus on their purchases.

ST Power: When a total of 180,000,000 ST have been sold, all participants in the sale shall receive an automatic 30% Power Bonus on their purchases.

When the sale ends, bonuses will be paid from any unsold tokens from the 240,000,000 tokens available for this sale. If there are not enough unsold tokens to cover the bonuses, the remainder will come from the reserve for possible future token sales. As an example, if all 240,000,000 tokens are sold and 90,000,000 bonus tokens are promised, the reserve for possible future token sales will drop from 17% to 5%.

Unsold tokens from the first token sale shall be burned after all bonuses have been allocated.

Purchased tokens will be distributed immediately upon confirmation of payment, and shall be activated within 3 weeks from the closing of the token sale.

Bonus tokens will be distributed within 45 days of the closing of the token sale, and will be activated upon distribution.

All purchasers in the first token sale will receive a 20% discount on any purchases in future token sales, should such events occur.

Summary

We think this project is solid. The idea could really take blockchain and cryptocurrency to mainstream businesses, while doing all the hard work for them. The team is lead by Jason Goldberg of Social Median and Fab.com fame. Simple Token already has a working protocol and platform with seven companies already onboard. We at II&RG believe this to be a long-term hold, as this idea could have a huge impact on bringing the cryptospace to mainstream adoption, and we have a chance to get in on the ground floor.

Research Team Recommendation

The project’s ICO will end on the 1st of December. It has good potential as a quick flip right after the ICO due the moderate hype surrounding the project. The attention it is getting, along with the proven team, makes this ICO a relatively low risk investment. What to look out for is the possibility of a lack of blockchain start-ups that want to use their platform. The bonus structure also mitigates the risk of a dump below ICO price at listing, as every participant is awarded the same bonus.

There is a possibility of a second round of public sales, but we do not think this will affect the price long term. Furthermore, the team is very upfront about questions, and are easy to get in touch with for further information on Telegram. Due to the project offering a product that can help the adoption of other blockchain projects as an ease-of-use intermediary, it is very likely that Simple Token will see business up-starts looking to take advantage of their platform in the near future. We recommend holding it until Q1 in 2018 for those looking for a longer investment, due to it starting to reach project maturity as they start their initial consumer-facing deployment, as per their roadmap. If this project gains traction, I would advise to keep an eye on it during Q1 for another assessment, and see if it is worth holding until the widespread deployment in Q3/Q4 2018.

Those missing out on the ICO should not worry as they should still be able to get a good deal when it initially hits the market. Look out for an official EtherDelta listing in the coming week.

Disclaimer:All content provided by IRG is purely observational and should not be considered financial advice. IRG is not an investment group, but a research group that meticulously scans the market for those projects deemed to have the most potential. Cryptoassets are subject to high market volatility and risk, invest responsibly at your own risk. Seek a licensed professional before making any investments. For the latest from Ironwood, subscribe at Ironwood Research Group to receive all of our technical reports, one-page overviews, and weekly market updates before anyone else.

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Decentral magazine is an online media, that treats daily news about cryptocurrency and ICO analysis. The DC team is composed of professional and enthusiastic crypto holders from around the globe. Our mission is to provide you with exclusive content in various languages.